Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich said on Thursday that police officers have “too much to do” to help people suffering from various social ills.
Elrich spoke Thursday evening at the beginning of an electronic town hall meeting with police chiefs from various law enforcement agencies in the county. The local police chiefs answered preselected questions from viewers.
The county organized the forum in response to the death in Minneapolis of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, who died on May 25 after a white police officer pinned him to the ground with his knee for nearly nine minutes.
Elrich said there is a larger problem than a few officers who don’t do their jobs well.
“We need to deal with the bad apples, but the problem is deeper than bad apples. The problem is how we train and what we expect officers to do,” he said.
Elrich said problems such as a lack of affordable housing, health care and decent wages, particularly for people of color, are immediate needs that need to be met to help improve police-community relations.
“We know enough about the complexity of these underlying social problems, and yet we’ve handed this entire bag to the police department,” he said. “You’re homeless, it’s the police. You have an alcohol or drug problem, it’s the police. You can’t control your temper, it’s the police. Whatever it is, it’s the police.”
Elrich said he doesn’t favor “defunding” the police — a movement suggesting that money be redirected from police departments toward social services and other community resources — but thinks the county should “fund things that ought not be police functions.”
During the town hall meeting, chiefs discussed reforms they have implemented or are planning on introducing, such as better mental health services for officers, mediation between officers and residents, and de-escalation tactics.
Darryl McSwain, the chief of the Maryland-National Capital Park Police, Montgomery County division, said his department has mandated crisis intervention training for all officers. Initially, he said, the training was only mandatory for officers with certain types of weapons, such as Tasers.
“We felt the training was so important that it should be extended to every single individual. Not only does it help them identify signs of mental illness, but it helps them deal with it more effectively,” he said.
McSwain also said Park Police have expanded their use of peer support services if officers don’t feel comfortable discussing problems with their supervisors. And the department has mandated that any officer involved in a “traumatic incident” must get a psychological assessment.
“It removes the stigma that someone’s going to get help because they’re so ‘weak,’ is the right thing to do, and will encourage someone to get help sooner rather than later,” he said.
Rockville Police Chief Victor Brito said his officers are trained in a de-escalation tactic known as Integrating Communications, Assessment and Tactics, or ICAT.
ICAT was developed by a Washington, D.C., organization, the Police Executive Research Forum, and uses crisis intervention tactics for dealing with people who don’t have a firearm.
“It’s very, very important for us to slow things down. Time and distance is very important in our profession. The closer you get to a situation, the more dangerous it gets,” Brito said.
Montgomery County Police Chief Marcus Jones had said in a previous town hall meeting this week that he was working on implementing ICAT training for his department.
Jones said he is committed to doing more to improve his officers’ sensitivity to minority communities. Officers already undergo diversity and implicit bias training. They also visit the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., as an educational exercise.
“People have to understand the circumstances of suffering,” he said.
Jones added that he will undertake a “racial audit” of his department to examine police practices and make recommendations for improvement.
“We’re gonna make that known to the public when we do that,” he said.
Antonio DeVaul, Takoma Park’s police chief, said in response to a question about mediation between police and civilians as an alternative dispute resolution method that he supports it and his department is working on it.
“A lot of times when these complaints come in, whether it’s courtesy of an officer … they file a complaint with a police department and they really never hear anything back, so they really get no resolution,” he said.
“I think it’s important for transparency and for [conflict] resolution.”
DeVaul said his department has tried to create a culture in which officers speak up if they see misconduct by other officers.
“I feel very confident that if officers see something similar to what happened in Minneapolis, they’re gonna step up,” he said, referring to Floyd’s death.
McSwain, when asked about why Floyd’s death had led to so much outrage in recent weeks, said it’s a combination of factors.
Part of the outrage, he said, stems from the fact that Floyd is one of multiple African Americans to die during or after being in police custody across the country. But another, he said, is the disturbing nature of the video of Floyd being held down, which a bystander captured.
“When I say 8 minutes and 46 seconds, it means so much more to us today than it did three weeks ago, when you think about what that man went through,” he said.
McSwain said he was moved to tears when he first watched the video.
“It didn’t come to my eyes because I’m a public safety executive, or father of four. But just as a human being,” he said.
Dan Schere can be reached at Daniel.schere@moco360.media